Tech Executive Finds Her Passion Galloping By

Christine Vermes of Intel Corp. Discovered Polo at a Party Overlooking a Polo Field

For two months earlier this year Christine Vermes traded her 9-to-5 job in Silicon Valley for life on a polo ranch. Every day, Ms. Vermes, a marketing director for Intel Corp., woke at 6 a.m., dragged wheelbarrows from pasture to pasture, threw out bales of hay, bathed horses and, of course, practiced polo.

"It's a little bit of a city slicker package," she says of the time she spent on the ranch in Thermal, Calif.